Awkward
by miss selah
Summary: [Pan's Labyrinth]She is no longer called Ofelia. Her name is one that can only be pronounced properly by the wind and the leaves. And he can only watch. [Pan Ofelia]


* * *

**Awkward**

* * *

She isn't called Ofelia here, in this underground fairy tale place where names can only be pronounced by the lips of the winds and the leaves. She is called Princess or Majesty or Moana by others, and she runs barefoot through the labyrinth walls, her stiffled giggles echoing soundlessly in the endless maze. The Faun, who has even less of a name than she does, follows uneasily, because he is not a hunter and his hoofs clack too loudly on the cold stone ground for him to be any real threat. 

He calls out to her, by sound before name, because he is trying to make her forget that she was ever called 'Ofelia,' and simply make her 'Princess.'

She stops finally, at the base of the stairwell that will lead up in to the light. The base of the stairwell that will make her forget. . .

"Princess." The Faun is right behind her, his the sound of his hoofs softened by the moss-coated ground.

She looked up, and remembers.

It's hours before the Faun can make her stop crying, awkwardly trying to balance her tiny, frail form in his arms while still on two hooves. He pats her hair, soothing her with a human lullaby that he has heard her hum when she thinks no one is watching, and she stops crying, appeased, but doesn't let him go.

* * *

She lays by the pool that once, in another form, was stained a deep red by the blood of an innocent, later, a monster, and the Faun stands akwardly about, trying to figure out what to say or do to make her highness smile again. He kicks a bit of dirt in to the pool with the tip of his hoof, and her eyes follow it, dull and listless. 

_Just like the last time she. . ._

"Majesty?" The Faun dares to draw her attention, but fails. She hates it when he calls her by titles, because they are too close for that. "Moana?" Nothing, still.

"Ofelia?"

She looks up this time, startled out of her trance, and gives him a smile. "Sorry. What were you saying?"

The Faun just sighs, and tries to correct his posture for her. "Nothing."

* * *

She is getting older, in the way of the Faeries, and with her age comes the attention of the rest of the Underworld. 

Pixies and Goblins and Gremlins and the rest all follow her barefooted steps, because they want to try to get one of her smiles out of her. The Faeries of high ilk, Seelie, who look human but couldn't be farther, are arranged to see her by her father, and she accepts them warmly as new friends because she doesn't yet understand why each one of them brings her presents and candies.

One by one, the Seelie leave her, until it is only the Faun and her Highness.

"You wont ever leave me?" she asks him again, because she has been hurt too many times.

"Never." He promises, and dares to seal it with a kiss.

She is not a little girl anymore.

* * *

She does not run barefoot, and she does not dream of sunlight, because she knows that the sun is covered in blood in that world, that world up above. She knows that Frogs will kill Faery trees if only so that they don't have to show their faces, and she knows that scrumptious feasts are only meant to lure innocent children to be eaten themselves. She knows better than to trust men who promise the world, and she knows better than to take anything at face value. 

She knows that magic exists, and she uses it constantly.

She pulls out a crumbled piece of chalk and opens the wall from her room to his. He is always sneaking in, watching her pretend to sleep, and so she returns the favor.

In a silk night gown, she pads silently over the floor like he never could, and brush an out of place blonde lock away from his face.

His eyes open quickly, fiercely, but when he sees her, they soften, and he smiles as though he is unsure of himself, even though he is the only creature she could ever be sure of.

"Majesty?" He asks, confusion in his voice. A tinkling of bells tells her that the Faery bugs have awoken, should she decide to play.

"I had a bad dream." She lies, and the innocence is lost in her pouty lip, leaving something seductive and sexy in its stead. "May I sleep with you tonight?"

He can't say no to her, for reasons greater than her status. She crawls into his nest of soft fur and heather, and sleeps with her head on his chest. She hasn't felt this safe in too long to remember.

"And you won't ever leave me?" She asks later, in her sleep.

The Faun, who would never dream of sleeping through a single moment with her in his arms, smiles, assured, and brushes a soft hand over her sleeping head. "Never." He has forever. He has no trouble promising it to her.

* * *

He is unsure of how to dance with the Princess, how to woe her like a Princess is supposed to be woed. His Majesty, the King, has no objection to the couple, because he will rule forever anyway, and he justs wants his daughter in his court, happy, so that she may bestow upon them pretty smiles, and plant pretty flowers and tell pretty tales. 

Clumsily, the Faun offers a gift of a single flower, and she accepts it with the same fervor she accepted the other ones. It would have frightened him, would have made him think that she didn't care for his attentions, if he didn't know that the Princess wasn't used to romantic intentions and had to have this things spelled out for her.

The next time he gives her a gift, it's one of his faeries, the green one that found her in the first place. She smiles this time, and not just because he gave her a gift, and he is showered in her kisses her attentions her love. He would give her a thousand more faeries, if only she would do it again, but she is a simple girl, even when she is a Princess, and she points out to him that she wouldn't know what to do with a thousand faeries.

He contents himself with the present, and dreams of the future in the nights that she doesn't come to him.

* * *

They are playing by the pool again, in the light of the fake moon, and her shoes are off and her hair is free as she splashes him with a playful smile that doesn't look as innocent on her as it once did. 

"Marry me?" He doesn't mean to ask it, here, with none of the ceremony or beauty he intended. She gasps anyway, shocked, before a coy smile settles over her face.

"I will marry you, Faun, if you will answer me this one question." She tells him, and he nodds, praying he knows the answer. "That night, by this very pool, when you asked me for my brother; would you have killed him so that I may enter here?"

The Faun trembled, fearing more than her wrath. He feared her sadness, her hate, the idea of a future that didn't have her in it.

"Would you have killed him so that I didn't have to?" She asked, her eyes pleading with him to give her his answer.

Fauns, no matter how they may bend the truth, could not outright lie.

"Yes." He tells her, his eyes downcast in shame.

She walks up to him, and puts her tiny, dainty hand in his own. "Then that shall be my answer."

He smiles when she kisses him, and if he lifts her up in to his arms, they aren't so awkward as they might have been.

* * *

Anonymous Fangirl: I think that the Faun had good intentions when he was going to kill her little brother; she couldn't be innocent if there was blood on her hands. Sorry, I'm making excuses for my favorite character again. 


End file.
